The original project upon which this renewal grant is based is a three part exploration of the psychiatric record. These are: 1) a review of legal and otherwise mandated requirements. 2) a national survey to assess the perceptions and attitudes of clinicians and 3) a field study at 18 clinical locations to determine the structure and contents of records and to examine how much, how often, and by which clinicians, for what kinds of activities and reasons, records are used. Extensive data has already been accumulated, key punched, and preliminry data analysis carried out. This renewal grant requests funding to conclude a more in depth level of analysis. In particular it is proposed to link the findings of the three studies, to produce a theoretical model of an efficient record based on the collected data and to disseminate the results through focused articles, publication of a book including a comprehensive view of the psychiatric record (including the findings of this study).